The thud of the ball against willow. The smell of linseed oil. The gentlemanly cry of "Howzat!" This is what cricket is all about, and EA Sports, have updated Cricket World Cup 99 to capitalise on a trend for making cricket hip with Cricket 2000. The thing with cricket is that it's a long, drawn-out affair, lacking the quick machine gun emotion of football that's so easy to capture in a game. However, fair play to EA who have endeavoured to create an involving sports sim with strategy overtones that should keep cricket fans and older players happy during the rainy months. Before padding up and walking out into one of the three different levels of match, it is recommended to spend time in the training nets, mastering bowling and batting, which are tricky to say the least. Once you've got there, it's time to take on the world. Get in a quick One Day International before tea; get the gang round for a more involved, multi-player World Cup Tournament, or cut to the chase and play the World Cup Super Six, a six-team tournament representing the cream of world cricket. The gameplay is slow, but that's cricket, and there are lots of options for selecting different stadia, weather conditions, day or night and game length and the commentary from David Gower and Richie Benaud is entertaining. Graphically this is up to EA's usual standard, sacrificing total realism for naturalistic movement, and all in all makes for a nicely packaged simulation of a difficult sport. --Mark Wright